Online quizzes have taken the Internet by storm in recent months. Curious which Grease character you are? Zimbio has a quiz for that. Looking for ways to spend $100? BuzzFeed has a quiz that could help.As useful and fun as these quizzes might be to the respondents that answer them, there’s another group that’s extremely interested in the answers given by quiz-hungry Web surfers: Marketers.BuzzFeed and Zimbio say they don’t collect quiz answers for ad purposes, but some other companies do. Increasingly, advertising companies are using quizzes as a tool to collect detailed information about the people that interact with them. That information is then sold to advertisers, advertising agencies, and other advertising technology companies to help them target and tailor online ads.Take this quiz published by Wikia.com, for example, which is powered by UK-based online ad company VisualDNA. The quiz promises to tell you about your personality based on your answers to around 20 multiple choice questions. Some of those questions include “Do you own a car?”, “Do you have children?”, and “What is your age?”, the answers to which would probably prove valuable to an automotive advertiser, for example.Other quizzes powered by VisualDNA, such as this one on travel site Explorra.com, ask questions such as “What do you like doing on holiday?”, “What’s your kind of hotel?”, and “What’s your budget?” That information might be of interest to an advertiser selling budget ski holidays.According to VisualDNA, the company has now built profiles on more than 300 million users using its psychometric quizzes.Behavioral tracking isn’t new in the world of online advertising, of course. Almost all online ad companies now track user behavior across the Web to help them target their ads more successfully. But the difference with VisualDNA’s approach is it enables specific data volunteered by users themselves, as opposed to making assumptions based on users’ behaviors.“We collect information about demographics, intent, interests, and personality. These can predict what people might be interested in buying or hearing about,” said Jacob Wright, head of strategy at VisualDNA.That information is then tied to cookies that are dropped on users’ Web browsers, which are in turn used to identify where users travel across the web. The cookie data is licensed to advertisers, agencies, and advertising technology companies looking to target those users based on the information they volunteered.According to Mr. Wright, the quizzes VisualDNA produces and powers aren’t simply lists of purchase intent questions; they’re primarily designed to provide value to users.“With our quizzes we provide tools that help people understand themselves. In general people find it positive and valuable which is why the quizzes often go viral online,” he saidGoing beyond marketing, VisualDNA said it’s even using data from quizzes to help predict how likely consumers are to repay credit lines. “We’ve created tests that can accurately predict loan repayments. Some people might not have credit histories, but they do have personalities,” Mr. Wright explained.But not all online quizzes collect data in the manor VisualDNA’s do. BuzzFeed, for example, says none of the answers to its popular quizzes and questionnaires are collected and tied to cookies for ad targeting purposes.“BuzzFeed does not drop cookies about whether a user got London vs Paris in a quiz result, or whether they said they prefer espresso over latte in a quiz answer. Third-party trackers are also not tied into what people answer in a quiz,” a BuzzFeed spokesperson said.BuzzFeed said it collects some data in aggregate form to help it understand what percentage of users finish quizzes and understand how that relates to social sharing. It does not “look at or care about the individual’s responses to quizzes,” the spokesperson added.Likewise, popular quiz site Zimbio says it doesn’t collect data about users’ quiz answers either.“We don’t use any of the specific results or answers to target ads or to do anything else commercial,” said Tony Mamone, CEO of Zimbio’s parent company, Livingly Media.Zimbio does gather and keep some aggregate data, however, in order to help inform the creation of its quizzes. For example, if users consistently get a question wrong, it might be swapped out for an easier one instead.”“For us this is this data is purely editorial. It’s not an ad play or a targeting data play,” Mr Mamone concluded.

Even if you do have the best product or service in the world, plus an awesome killer sales letter that could sell sand to a dessert rat. If you still don't have any potential customers seeing what you have to offer then obviously you won't make a penny, not one cent. Traffic is king as someone famously quoted.

That's the reason why marketers like you and I spend so much time and effort, not to mention money, trying to put our offers in front of as many targeted leads as possible. But it doesn't have to be like that if you know which marketing methods actually work, and there are plenty which work and work well and there are many which I can tell you from experience simply do not work.

Here are a few tactics that I use and they work well and you can implement them in your business today.1) Social Media MarketingAny savvy online marketer will know that social media marketing as huge as it is, still remains in its infancy as the number of new users joining Facebook explodes by more and more each year and new social media and share sites pop up all over the net. Start to set up your social marketing campaigns right now and you are in a perfect position to profit from the enormous benefits in the months and year to come.

As you may know social media marketing is all about building relationships with people and building networks of friend and colleagues and also new contacts. So start building a good reputation in your niche now by establishing yourself as an expert in your field and on as many social networks as you can, that way you can fully take advantage of the huge leverage you will have to market your product or service in your niche.Start With the some of the well know and largest social media sites like:

Web 2.0 sites, such as Squidoo.com. and Hubpages. These sites let you create your own Squidoo lens or Hubpage which is basically a page on your chosen niche subject with your link back to your money site or any other site or blog. Google ranks these pages highly and spider them often.

Social networking,Facebook.com you already know, but did you know you could also create niche-specific groups and you should do this and of course have your own personal page and business fan page. Seek out niche specific social networking sites like linkdin... check out Apsense.com by clicking my invite link below, this fast emerging new social site is highly geared towards marketing... cilcik the link below to set up your free profile.

Paid listings - pay per click such as Google AdWords (although Google AdWords has become very expensive so choose your keywords wisely)

Both of these methods have their advantages and disadvantages. Organic search engine listings can bring a large amount of traffic for months and even years once you get to the top of the searches, but can take a long time to rank well if your keywords are even moderately competitive. PPC or pay per click marketing can be expensive but will provide you with targeted and instant traffic.

3) Banner Ads and Text AdsA great way to ensure your offers are seen is by creating and placing targeted ads. These can be online or offline or better BOTH.Banner ads and text ads work well if you choose highly targeted to your niche sites to lace them on.

Purchasing Solo ads and also doing ad Swaps is a very good way to target new leads and generate new customers.

Blog advertising is useful and you can also offer to make guest posts on popular blogs, this is a win win situtation for you and the blog owner. They get free unique written content for their site and in return you get a back-link to your site and the added exposure.

Depending on your niche Newspaper and Magazine advertising can be very effective and for local businesses local radio advertising is a highgly effective form of advertising and it is surprisingly cheaper than you might think.

So Which Advertising Strategy is Best?All of them! To maximize your impact and reach more people you should be implementing All of the above marketing methods into your business and you will see a huge jump in customers. Be sure to track each method in order to see where to concentrate your efforts for maximum growth.

These three advertising methods are very powerful when you implement them into any business but actually that is only the tip of the iceberg... there are plenty more proven marketing methods and when you put these three together with other powerful marketing techniques, you turn on the tap and get a constant flow of new leads and prospects to convert. And it all starts when you claim a free Silver Membership at TrafficGenerationClub (normally $27.00) Just Use This Special Link For Access FREE Silver Membership Link.